No doubt Man City are the favourites. They are the best team of the EPL at the moment. Haaland's arrival supported them very well for the EPL champions. But you have to know at the moment Arsenal are also in very good shape. One loss in 14 games is a pretty good record. The 5-point gap makes them quite breathable from Man City's chase. So I believe these 2 teams will be strong candidates for the championship this season. Who can perform well and survive with the best game then they will be champions.
Manchester City will still be superior because they will next meet several opponents which in my opinion are easy to beat and will make Manchester City get additional points easily, As for Arsenal, they still need to work hard to win and of course it's not easy for Arsenal to do that, but in the end Arsenal have managed to take first place for a while.
City will try to do the best since EPL will be entering into the mid until the end of season. City has no reason to let arsenal to make the gap even bigger. The only hope for city to see arsenal get some loses and that will give city another chance to pass arsenal in term of total points acquired in EPL.
Manchester city will be facing liverpool at 23th december. haaland and de bruyne was also doing so well during the match against girona. It's a practice match but that's enough to make sure city has enough resource to defeat liverpool.
City was also trying to sign some new players from another club like gvardiol and bukayo saka from arsenal